Foster Cunliffe (Sir Foster's grandfather) was known as a Liverpool merchant and philanthropist. He was a leading figure in the city and was mayor three times. By 1720 Foster had built up a trading business with the tobacco plantations in Virginia. The company owned four slave trade ships and twelve cargo ships. In mid-century, he and his sons Ellis and Robert part-owned at least 26 ships, at least four of them slavers, the Bulkley, Bridget, Foster and Ellis and Robert. Altogether these ships held 1,120 slaves, and they brought the Cunliffe family enough profit to load a dozen ships a year with sugar, rum and tobacco for sale in England.

For example, on Sept 8th, 1753, the Robert and Ellis, a ship jointly owned by the Foster family and five others, captained by Richard Jackson with 32 crew members, set sail for Africa. The ship was 6 years old and 100 tons. Captain Jackson sailed the ship down the West coast of Africa until 267 Africans were chained and crammed on board. Only 218 captives disembarked at Kingston, Jamaica on October 3rd 1754. The ship remained for four months in the West Indies, presumably buying cargo, and returned to Liverpool on April 4th, 1755.

A ship named the New Foster was listed as being owned by Henry White, co-owner of the Cunliffes’ other ships and they likely co-owned this one too. White was himself Captain on a voyage that left Liverpool in the summer of 1743 and arrived in Kingston nine months later with the loss of half the crew and 65 out of 359 African captives. The ship next sailed from Liverpool late in 1744 with a different Captain. According to Lloyds the insurer, it was shipwrecked without delivering its cargo of up to 250 Africans, and presumably all lives were lost. Henry White must have done well for himself though, as in 1714 he had only been co-captain - not owner - of a much smaller slave ship, the Peace.

Sir Foster's uncle, Sir Ellis, 1st  Baronet of Acton Park became MP for Liverpool, although he actually spent his time hundreds of miles away in Sussex. Sir Foster's father, Sir Robert Cunliffe, was director of the company, but preferred to keep it at arm’s length and appointed Robert Morris as manager. Morris also made his own investments in American tobacco.

By 1750 the Cunliffe company had 5 trading posts in Virginia and 26 ships working the Triangular Trade. They traded Cheshire salt, pig iron, white indentured servants and enslaved men, women and children from Africa. They even won the contract to ship Jacobites into exile after the failed rising of 1745. Merchant ships including “slavers” were at risk of attack by pirates and French corsairs. Slave ships were usually armed with a few cannon, and sometimes carried a war captain as well as a merchant captain. In 1750 the Cunliffes’ manager Morris was killed in an accident involving a cannon on deck. His son Robert, however, had moved to Philadelphia and was an important financier of the War of Independence, a signatory of the American Declaration of Independence and one of the Founding Fathers. He later went bankrupt and spent three years in debtors prison.

The company founder, Foster Cunliffe died in 1758, and the company’s last voyage was in 1761. By then the family were wealthy enough to live off their investments, and settled into politics and the life of the landed gentry at Acton Park. in Wales. Sir Foster Cunliffe enjoyed this lifestyle with his love of archery and the arts. After his death in 1834 his second son, Robert Henry, became 4th Baronet. Robert fought in India with the East India Company. He died in 1859. 

John Hoppner and the painting

The Wrexham Yeomanry was formed in May 1795, as one troop the Wrexham Yeomanry Cavalry. Its purpose was to defend against a Napoleonic invasion. The first command was offered to Sir Foster Cunliffe of Acton Park. He declined on the ground of military inexperience, and joined as an ordinary yeoman, but eventually became Major Commandant of the Wrexham Yeomanry and High Sheriff of Denbighshire in 1787.

From: ‘A History of Wrexham, Denbighshire: Published for the Wrexham Borough Council in Commemoration of the Centenary of the Incorporation of the Borough, 1857-1957 By Arthur Herbert Dodd.  p310-11

History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque: With an Account of the Slave Trade.

By Gomer Williams. Heinemann (London & Liverpool 1897) pages 155 & 674.

“Merchant and philanthropist”

From: Capitalism & Slavery by Eric Williams, Univ of N Carolina (1944)

“The slave traders were among the leading humanitarians of their age. John Gary, advocate of the slave trade, was conspicuous for his integrity and humanity and was the founder of a society known as the "Incorporation of the Poor..." Bryan Blundell of Liverpool, one of Liverpool's most prosperous merchants, engaged in both the slave and West Indian trades, was for many years trustee, treasurer, chief patron and most active supporter of a charity school, the Blue Coat Hospital...  To this charity another Liverpool slave trader, Foster Cunliffe, contributed largely. He was a pioneer in the slave trade. He and his two sons are listed as members of the Liverpool Committee of Merchants trading to Africa in 1752. Together they had four ships capable of holding 1,120 slaves, the profits from which were sufficient to stock twelve vessels on the homeward journey with sugar and rum. An inscription to Foster Cunliffe in St. Peter's Church describes him thus: "a Christian devout and exemplary in the exercise of every private and publick duty, friend to mercy, patron to distress, an enemy only to vice and sloth, he lived esteemed by all who knew him . . . and died lamented by the wise and good. . . “

“The slave traders were firmly established in both houses of Parliament. Ellis Cunliffe represented Liverpool in Parliament from 1755 to I767- 112 The Tarleton family, prominent in the slave trade, voiced Liverpool's opposition to abolition in Parliament. The House of Lords, [Upper chamber of Parliament] traditionally conservative, was confirmed in its instinctive opposition to abolition by the presence of many ennobled slave traders. It gave sympathetic hearing to the Earl of Westmorland's statement that many of them owed their seats in the Upper House to the slave trade, and that abolition was Jacobinism.”

“The sole aim of the slave merchants was to have their decks "well coverd with black ones." It is not uncommon to read of a vessel of 90 tons carrying 390 slaves or one of 100 tons carrying 4I4. Clarkson's investigations in Bristol revealed a sloop of twentyfive tons destined for seventy human beings, and another of a mere eleven tons for thirty slaves. The space allotted to each slave on the Atlantic crossing measured five and a half feet in length by sixteen inches in breadth. Packed like "rows of books on shelves," as Clarkson [a leading abolitionist] said, chained two by two, right leg and left leg, right hand and left hand, each slave had less room than a man in a coffin.”

Sir Foster Cunliffe’s mother also came from a merchant family. Her father Ichabod Wright had been an ironmonger, importing from the Baltic states. This was a trade which fed the nascent Industrial Revolution in Britain. He was successful and moved into the gentry by setting up as a banker in Nottingham at the age of 61. It is hard now to understand the utter disdain with which merchants were regarded by the Peerage. Sir Foster wasn’t only eager to forget about his family’s trading in human lives, but also that they traded at all. But one thing that hasn’t changed, is our willingness to condemn the sins of our forebears whilst living in their houses.

Harriet Kinloch, Lady Cunliffe, at the time of her marriage in 1781,

by John Hoppner R.A. - © The National Gallery of Art, D.C.

St Lucia following the French Revolution from Face2Face :

“In 1791, enslaved Africans teamed up with the Maroons in Soufrière... [then Saint Lucia‘s Capital] to march and request their freedom from British slave owners. The march was immediately reported to the British ... The leaders and several others who were involved in the march were.. captured and tortured to death with their heads cut off and placed on spikes and displayed around town to serve as a warning. For several years, this horrid event lingered in the minds of the blacks who planned and hoped for revenge.

In 1793, after having enough of the harsh treatment and several rape incidents with her owner, Flore Bois managed to escape from the plantation and took refuge in the woods where she [lived with Africans who had escaped from slavery, the] Maroons. Flore quickly rose as the military leader for the French Army of the Woods, the name of the rebel group made up of Maroons and slaves who met secretly to plan a rebellion and declare St Lucia a free country after getting rid of the British.

In April 1795, Flore declared the army ready to strike and sought revenge for the 1791 event after... [receiving a tipoff] that the British were on their way to attack her army on April 11, 1795 [just three days before Major Archibald Kinloch murdered his brother]. Flore and her army went to Soufrière to attack slave owners in what is now known as the Battle of Rabot.

The army was successful in killing several British slave owners, burning down plantations and freeing several slaves who later joined the army which became known as the Brigands. Flore went on to kill her former master and burn down his plantation. The surviving British fled to Castries which is now the Capital of St Lucia.